Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Monday, January 18, 2010

Profiles In My Own Courage

So what do you do when you're stirring your soup, gazing dreamily into the saucepan as steam begins to rise and the beef and vegetables swirl in schools through their rich, glistening red-brown broth, when suddenly something terrifying whirls up from the deeps and into view for two horrifying seconds! - your mind unable to look away from it! Your eyes unable to identify it! - before it rolls and sinks back into the depths from whence it vomited unspeakably forth! I mean some object or thing so odd, so uncanny, that after it vanishes, you - freed from paralysis - stagger back gasping. Your spoon slips from your spasming hand, and describes a high, tumbling arc that lands *plop* in the sudsy dishwater! What do you do, in that case?

Well I will tell you what I do, or rather: what I did.

First I retrieved the spoon and gave it a good rinsing-off, of course.

Next I stirred, very carefully, the now-roiling boil of broth until the visibility began to clear, somewhat. I also lowered the heat. I stirred. I stirred. I even scooped around and around, getting everything moving in near-vertical circles instead of horizontal ones. I dared the thing to come forth again! And then, when it refused, cowering in some deep, ever-shifting corner, I made up my mind.

I poured the still fiercely-steaming soup into a bowl - eyes vigilant. Nothing. So I made up my mind.

I sat down and resolved to eat that soup. Bite by grim bite. Do you know what that's called? Do you know what that exemplifies?

COURAGE.

I screamed a little when I saw it again, about halfway through the bowl. Luckily, the soup had cooled a bit by that point! I got a little soup everywhere, in the confusion. But I'd cornered the damn thing, and I chased it around a bit more with my spoon, and fished it out. It was a really weird-shaped hunk of potato, that had a piece of sallow, yellowy-orange carrot embedded into it, in a way that made it look like something out of Satan's worst nightmare. I gave it a good look. Then I got up, balancing it in the spoon, walked to the kitchen door, stepped out into the garden and pitched that thing out, far as I could! Pitched hard, at the stars. It's probably still flying.

10 comments:

That made me laugh out loud for two reasons. One, it was funny. Two, it was ME. I am obsessed by finding foreign matter in my food. I am terrified of it happening. I am vigilant at all times around my food in case some ALIEN ENTITY gets in there. If I see one speck of unidentifiable matter in there it's all over and I'll go hungry. I am a freak with food. I am. A freak. And yes, you are brave.

You know, I've never come across a two yolk egg before. However, I cracked a couple of eggs a few weeks ago that had non perfect yolks - each one had a little white speck of eggy STUFF in the yolks and I had to not eat them out of principle in case it was, I don't know...ectoplasm or something. I'm easily put off. Those eggs were new, fresh and perfectly fine I know, but really. Eggs shouldn't have ectoplasm. No. :)

(and I've had the white-globules in the yolk too! I'm at peace with them, though, because they remind me of a sort of descendingly concentric instead of side-by-side version of yin yang, and pretty much all things zen serve to calm me).

It is a well-established fact that the ultimate sign of courage in the kitchen is the ability to put some bread in the toaster, stare intently at the grill, face right up close, and not flinch when it pops. I don't think anyone has mastered it yet.

But only if I'm walking at the edge of evening's twilight. If it's a twilit morning walk, then they do switch off.

All forces circulate cyclically. True mind power is in the mind. No one can command the forces that flow about them! But it's about understanding, not command. So that when you know something is going to happen anyway, you can level booming predictions about it, and then reap the credit and awe on the afters.

Oh shit - I have to get going! I need to get ready to make the sun go down.

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As far as I know, I haven't made any money off of this blog and nobody's given me any free shit! In fact, it's kind of bullshit for me to find out about this now, when all this time presumably everyone else has been swimming in a sea of palm-grease, surfing in on the waves of payola while lining their bathing trunks with thick sheaves of filthy lucre!

Where's mine? Is there a grievance e-mail address that can be made available to we who seek redress for having been so grievously snubbed?

I got NOTHING.

Notice dated 12/1/09. Notice will be revised as soon as I tap my share of that sweet, sweet, internet swag.